Ford's Lightning -- Case Study -- Why EVs Have A Long Way To Go -- May 23, 2021

Link here.  

• Range.
• Cost.
• Size.

********************************
The Apple Car

From The Wall Street Journal. 

Let's see: how many decades has Apple been working on "the Apple car"?

Headline: Apple and the end of the car as we know it.

Sub-headline: As cars become computers on wheels, Apple is joining other tech companies in eyeing the $5 trillion auto market.

With the M1, Apple, I think, has a huge head-start. 

From the linked WSJ article:

Now that the car is evolving into essentially a smartphone on wheels, it’s no wonder Apple is kicking the tires.

First, there is the transition from internal combustion engines to electric motors, which have far fewer mechanical parts. Now, enabled by that change, a second shift is under way—one that’s a prerequisite for a self-driving future.

For a century, the automobile was a system of interoperating mechanics: engine, transmission, drive shaft, brakes, etc. As those mechanics evolved, electronic sensors and processors were brought in to assist them, but the concepts changed little. The result was cars with dozens or hundreds of specialized microchips that didn’t talk to each other. Now that auto makers are moving to electric motors, elaborate entertainment systems and adaptive cruise control, cars need central computers to control all these things—why not use them to control everything?

At the hardware level, this might just mean fewer chips handling more of a car’s functions. Yet it has profound implications for what future cars will be capable of, how car makers will make money, and who will survive—and thrive—in what could soon be a global automotive industry made unrecognizable to us today.

More:

Basically, everyone is shifting their emphasis to software—and hiring like crazy to do it. In the past year, almost every major automotive company has advertised that it would like to hire many more software developers. Volkswagen, for example, announced in March 2019 that it would add 2,000 to its technical development team; the company already employs thousands of software engineers. 

“Software is eating the world, and cars are next on the menu,” says Jim Adler, managing director of Toyota AI Ventures, a venture-capital fund owned by the car maker.

*********************************
Chips

Re-posting.

Chips: huge story, on so many levels -- TSMC -- largest chip maker in the world -- set to "double down" and vastly increase US semiconductor chip investment in Arizona. Link here.

The company had already said it was going to invest $10 billion to $12 billion in Arizona. Now, the company is mulling a more advanced 3 nanometer plant that could cost between $23 billion and $25 billion, sources said. The changes would come over the next 10 to 15 years, as the company builds out its Phoenix campus, the report notes.

The move would put TSMC in direct competition with Intel and Samsung for subsidies from the U.S. government. President Joe Biden has proposed $50 billion in funding for domestic chip manufacturing - a proposal the Senate could act on as soon as this week. Intel has also committed to two new fabs in Arizona and Samsung is planning a $17 billion factory in Austin, Texas.

*********************************
As If Apple Needed More Advertising

From The WSJ: M1 iMac 24-inch review: Apple built a cool desktop computer for the iPhone era.

When I was growing up, my parents bought a new television set, maybe, every decade. 

I now use my 27-inch iMac as a television set. I bought it two years ago or thereabouts.

It already feels old.

I will probably replace my "television" iMacs every three years. 

Becky Quick has Warren Buffett and CNBC.

Joanna Stern has Apple and The WSJ.

From the linked article:

Like its similarly priced two-decade-old ancestor, Apple’s 2021 iMac is also available in bright colors and with matching keyboard and mouse. The new version is far more evolved—a third of the weight, 24 times the pixels and at least 50 times the storage space—but the mission feels the same: Entice you to go out of your way to use a thing called a desktop computer.

The new iMac, which starts at $1,299 and arrives this Friday, does so by being more iPhone or iPad than any old-school Macintosh. It has a beautiful Retina display and a fingerprint sensor in its keyboard. In some lighting, the webcam is better than the front-facing iPad and iPhone selfie cameras. With a new Apple M1 chip inside, the iMac wakes in a split second—and even runs a handful of iOS apps.